


The Confession

by anyjay



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-25
Updated: 2012-02-25
Packaged: 2017-10-31 17:47:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anyjay/pseuds/anyjay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean figures out that Sam's been keeping a secret, but it's not what you think.</p>
<p>Please note that this fic is gen.  This is NOT wincest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Confession

Sam startled awake when one hand came down roughly to cover his mouth while another simultaneous grabbed his knife hand with an iron grip.

A fierce voice whispered in his ear “Not a peep, Sam. If you wake up Dad I will freaking kill you.”

The swell of relief at realizing the person holding him down was Dean was immediately swamped by a fresh wave of fear. Dean keeping secrets from Dad? This could only be bad. Really, really bad.

“You have one minute to get dressed and get your ass into the car or I will drag you out in your shorts.” Dean whispered.

Sam nodded once to show he understood.

Dean released him and stood back from the bed, his lips tight and his nostrils flaring. Sam didn’t know what was wrong, but Dean was furious.

Something must have gone seriously wrong at the poker game. Even if Dean had lost everything, he wouldn’t be this mad. Had somebody gotten hurt? 

Sam quickly pulled his jeans on over his boxers. He grabbed his wallet from the bedside table and then slipped his jacket on over the t-shirt he’d slept in. He checked the safety on his gun before stowing it away, then added a couple knives to his walking arsenal. Sam stuffed his bare feet into his shoes – no time for socks, Dean was in a hurry. He looked at Dean and nodded.

Dean moved silently passed the bed where Dad was still asleep, and was out the door in a flash. Sam scrambled to follow him, stopping only to make sure the motel room door closed quietly behind him.

Dean was already in the driver’s seat with the engine running when Sam got to the car. He barely waited for Sam to climb in and close the door before pealing out of the parking lot.

“God, Dean,” Sam said, “what happened?”

“Shut up,” Dean said. “Just shut up. You really don’t want to talk to me right now, Sammy”

-SAM- Sam thought, but he had enough sense not to correct his brother out loud.

When they reached the woods outside of town, Dean pulled off the road and climbed out of the car without looking at Sam. Sam opened the passenger door, but hesitated before getting out of the car. He had no idea why they were here or what Dean wanted him to do.

Dean answered Sam’s unspoken question by stalking around the car, grabbing Sam’s arm and pulling him bodily out and onto his feet. As Sam flailed, nearly losing his balance, Dean grabbed his other arm and shoved him back against the side of the impala. Still holding him, Dean got right up in Sam’s face.

“What did you do, Sammy?” he demanded.

“Huh?” Sam asked. “I didn’t do anything. I was asleep. I was asleep in bed all night. You can ask Dad.”

“Yesterday,” Dean said, not backing down at all. “Where did you get the money?”

Sam swallowed. Hell. Dean was going to kill him and Dad was going to salt and burn his bones. 

Sam tried to look innocent. “You told me to pawn your ring,” he said.

“This ring?” Dean asked. He took his right hand off Sam long enough to bring it up into Sam’s face. The sunlight glinted off the silver of the ring resting in its accustomed place on Dean’s right ring finger.

Sam struggled, pushing Dean away. “You took that from my duffle,” he said. “You have no right to be pawing through my stuff.

Dean shoved Sam in return but then stood back. “Don’t complain to me about rights. At this moment I’m your best friend in the whole world. Because I’m asking you. I could have gone to Dad.”

Sam tried to look Dean in the eye and act like he had nothing to hide, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t.

“Don’t tell Dad,” he whispered.

“Don’t tell Dad what,” Dean asked. “Where did you get the money?”

“I pawned the silverware and junk Dad collected to melt down for bullets.” Sam had no idea where that lie came from, but he was already cursing himself for his stupidity. Dean just had to open the trunk to see that the silver was still there.

“I didn’t want to risk losing your ring,” Sam added, trying to bolster the lie.

“Damn it, Sammy,” Dean said. “You didn’t pawn squat. I swung by the shop when the poker game finally broke up. I didn’t expect it to be open at the ass-crack of dawn, but I wanted to find out when I could collect my ring. The store closed at 5 PM yesterday. I didn’t send you out to pawn my ring until after 6.”

Shit, shit, shit. Sam hesitated between sticking with the stupid lie or throwing himself on Dean’s mercy. Except Dean didn’t look like he had any mercy.

“There’s another pawn shop,” Sam said.

“Fair enough,” Dean said, “so if I look in the trunk right now, the bag with Dad’s collection of silver won’t be there?”

And now Dean looked like he maybe had negative mercy. 

“Sammy!” Dean said. “Is the silver in the trunk or is it in a pawn shop?”

Sam wilted. Damn, he knew it was a stupid lie. “It’s in the trunk.” 

“You mug someone? Or roll a drunk?”

“Of course not!” So now Dean thought he was a thief. Great.

“Back in Indiana,” Dean said, “when we needed money to fix the car, you didn’t pick up a couple hundred hustling pool, did you Sammy?”

Sam shook his head, eyes fixed firmly on his shoes. Dean was going to figure it out. Please don’t let Dean disown him when he figured it out.

“And when I needed a stake in Colorado, you didn’t borrow money from a guy you knew at school, did you?”

Sam shook his head again. He could hardly breathe. Dad and Dean were going to just drive off and leave him at the side of the road. How could he be so stupid?

“You didn’t have time to earn that money honestly. So the only thing I can think is that you’re selling something,” Dean said.

Sam blinked. Was there a believable lie there that would save his ass? Sam didn’t own much except his weapons and his books. Books wouldn’t bring in that much and Dad would string Sam up if he thought he’d sold his weapons.

“You selling drugs, Sammy?” Dean asked.

Sam was so surprised by the question that he couldn’t even form a more coherent answer than “Huh?”

“That’s what I was looking for in your duffle, but I didn’t find any,” Dean said. “Did you sell out?”

“NO! God, no, Dean,” Sam said. “I’m not selling drugs. Are you insane? Are you freaking possessed? Christo!”

Instead of looking relieved, Dean looked even angrier and grimmer. He took a deep breath, and looked away like he couldn’t bear to see Sam’s face anymore.

Fuck, Sam thought. He knows. Dean knows.

“Only one other thing you could be selling,” Dean said, swallowing hard like the words pained him. “But there weren’t any condoms in your duffle either. I never thought you were this stupid, Sammy.”

Sam’s mind reeled, because it sounds like, it _sounds_ like Dean thinks – but Dean couldn’t possibly think that –

Dean whirled suddenly and was in Sammy’s face again. “We don’t need money that bad, Sammy. We’ve never needed money that bad. We never will need money that bad. God damn it to hell, Dad and I would rather starve. We’d rather let that yellow-eyed bastard win. We’d rather—”

Without conscious thought, Sam punched Dean right in the mouth. If he hadn’t been so furious, he’d have been proud that he’d been able to make Dean rock back with that punch.

“You think I’m—you think that I would-- God, Dean. Have you met me? Have you met me even once? And you think I would do that to get a hundred bucks so you can play poker?”

Dean was rubbing his jaw, looking a little less angry and a little more suspicious. “Then where’d you get the money from, Sammy? There’s nowhere else.”

Sam was too furious to watch what he says. “I got it from the bank, you idiot,”

“You robbed a bank?” Dean asked, both eyebrows climbing in surprise.

“No, I got it from the ATM,” Sam said.

“You broke into an ATM?” Dean said.

“No,” Sam said. He pulled his wallet from his pocket, opened it up, removed a plastic card and threw it at Dean’s head.

“I made a withdrawal,” he said.

Dean caught the card, but didn’t look at it. “Stop. Lying.” he said. “All the cards are maxed out. That’s why I told you to pawn my ring.”

Sam grabbed the card back from Dean and held it up in front of his brother’s face so Dean could read the name “Samuel Winchester” imprinted across the front.

“I have a bank account, moron,” Sam said. “I made a withdrawal. When you gave me money to buy back your ring, I would have deposited it instead.”

“You have a _bank account_? Dean grabbed the card and stared at it. He couldn’t have looked more stunned if Sam had said he was keeping alpacas in a shoebox in the trunk of the impala. “What do you have a bank account for?”

Okay, Sam thought, this is it. I’m about to die. “I’m saving up money for college,” he said.

Dean signed and rubbed his forehead the way he always did when he thought Sam was too stupid to live.

“Sammy,” he said gently, “you’re not going to college.”

Sam gritted his teeth. “Yes. I am.”

Dean grasped Sam’s shoulder. “Sammy, college costs thousands of dollars. More like tens of thousands of dollars. Even if Dad would let you go – which you know he won’t – you’d never be able to save enough. Don’t go wanting things you can’t have, man.”

Sam’s eyes widened. Dean hadn’t yelled. He hadn’t lectured Sam on his inescapable duty to follow Dad around for the rest of his life, shooting, bleeding, salting and burning. Maybe he could get Dean on his side. Maybe Dad would listen to Dean.

“I’m really, really good at school, Dean,” he said. “That’s how I got the money in the first place. I tutor people. Sometimes kids pay me to do their homework or write their papers. But it’s more than that. If I keep my grades up, I can get a scholarship. I’m sure of it.”

“A scholarship? What’s that?” Dean asked.

“That means they’d let me go to college for free. They might even pay for my food and let me stay in the dorms for nothing. I’d only have to pay for text books and junk like that. A guy at school told me his brother got a full scholarship to Princeton. He didn’t have to pay a dime.”

Dean shook his head. “Sammy, that guy was just yanking your chain. If a college can get, like, ten thousand dollars per student, why would they let someone come for nothing? That makes no sense.”

“No, scholarships are real,” Sam said. “I found a bunch of information on the web and—”

“On the web,” Dean interrupted. “God, Sam, don’t you know how many scams there are out there on the web?”

“But—”

Dean held up his hands to stave off the argument. “Look, I don’t care about the bank account, Sammy. It’s stupid, but if you want one it’s no skin off my back. I won’t even tell Dad.”

Sam sighed in relief.

“But don’t send money to any of these scholarship scams. No sense being any stupider than you can help.”

Sam bit his lip and told himself not argue. Let Dean think whatever he wanted to. This was a baby step in the right direction. Sam should just be grateful. He only had to keep his mouth shut for two more years, until he was done with high school and had a scholarship letter clutched in his hand.

“You hear me, Sammy?” Dean asked.

“Yes, Dean, I hear you,” Sam said. It wasn’t even really a lie.

“Good.” Dean reached out and ruffled Sam’s hair, and gave him a big grin. “You know, Sammy, I’m offended. You haven’t asked me about my night yet. I took that stake you got me and made a nice pile of change. Let’s go swing by that ATM so you can put your money back. Then we’ll grab some coffee and donuts.” 

Dean handed back the ATM card. “I guess you’ll be needing this. Be careful with it, though. Some credit card scam artist gets a hold of it, he’ll clean you out. Scum of the earth, those guys.”

“Yeah.” Sam smiled at his big brother. “That’s what I’ve heard.”


End file.
